5-7 years of legal practice experience in a law firm setting
Deep expertise in commercial transactions, corporate law, litigation, or regulatory work
Strong legal research and writing skills
Ability to articulate expert judgment clearly
Experience working with AI tools and technology
Proven ability to thrive in ambiguous environments
Passion for enhancing the quality of legal work through AI
Responsibilities
Define quality standards for legal work based on real client matters
Design realistic AI model evaluations with complex legal scenarios
Create and review legal documents demonstrating strong reasoning
Develop assessment rubrics for legal accuracy and issue spotting
Evaluate model outputs and provide actionable feedback
Collaborate with research teams on datasets and training tasks
Work with product and engineering teams to prototype workflows
Benefits
Hybrid work model with 3 days in the office
Relocation assistance for new employees
Full Job Description
About the Role
We are looking for a Subject Matter Expert in Law who brings the judgment and practical experience developed in a law firm to shaping the next generation of AI. You will help define what excellent legal work looks like, test where our models meet that standard, and turn your findings into better model behavior and product experiences.
This is a hands-on individual contributor role at the intersection of legal practice and AI development. You will work directly with legal materials, model outputs, evaluation rubrics, and product prototypes. Your expertise will help us tackle some of the hardest questions in legal AI, including how to assess reasoning when there is no single correct answer.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
In This Role, You Will:
Define the quality bar for what top-notch legal work looks like, drawing on real matters and the standards lawyers apply to research, analysis, drafting, document review, and client advice.
Design challenging, realistic AI model evaluations with representative facts, source materials, constraints, and deliverables, including cases that test ambiguity, competing arguments, and professional judgment.
Create and review reference work such as research memoranda, contract analyses, redlines, diligence findings, and draft legal documents that demonstrate strong reasoning and practical usefulness.
Develop rubrics that assess legal accuracy, issue spotting, factual grounding, citation validity, jurisdictional context, and the appropriate treatment of uncertainty.
Evaluate model outputs and complete legal workflows, identify recurring failures, and give researchers and engineers specific, actionable feedback supported by examples and corrected work.
Partner with Research on datasets, grading methods, and training tasks or environments that strengthen legal reasoning. Test whether model changes address the underlying problems and improve performance on new cases.
Work with Product and Engineering to identify valuable use cases, prototype workflows, and translate lessons from evaluations into experiences that fit how lawyers actually work.
Collaborate with legal professionals and design partners to refine our standards and test usefulness in practice, applying sound judgment around confidentiality, privilege, data permissions, and professional responsibility.
You Might Thrive in This Role If You:
Have practiced law at a law firm, with substantial experience producing and reviewing work for real client matters. We care more about demonstrated judgment and quality of work matter over title or firm pedigree.
Bring deep expertise in one or more practice areas, such as commercial transactions, corporate law, litigation, or regulatory work, and curiosity about workflows beyond your specialty.
Are an excellent legal researcher and writer who can assess authorities, distinguish strong arguments from plausible ones, and explain how facts and context affect a conclusion.
Can make expert judgment explicit: explain why an answer is incomplete, a clause creates risk, or an analysis misses the central issue, and describe what better work would look like.
Enjoy working directly with AI tools, exploring their limits, and testing ideas systematically. You can collaborate closely with technical teams and communicate clearly across disciplines.
Take ownership in ambiguous settings and are willing to build the first version of an evaluation, reference document, rubric, or workflow, then improve it through feedback.
Care deeply about the quality and consequences of legal work, and are motivated by the opportunity to help shape how AI supports the profession.
Especially Strong Candidates May Also Have:
Experience designing evaluations, benchmarks, datasets, or review frameworks for legal work or frontier AI systems.
A track record of improving legal workflows through technology, knowledge management, automation, or new ways of working.
Experience training or supervising lawyers, developing practice guidance, or translating complex legal concepts for different audiences.
About OpenAI
OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory consisting of the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and its parent company, the non-profit OpenAI Inc. The company was founded in 2015 by a group of technology leaders, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and John Schulman. OpenAI's mission is to develop and promote friendly AI for the betterment of humanity. The company has developed a number of cutting-edge AI technologies, including GPT-3, a language processing system that can generate human-like text. OpenAI has received funding from a number of high-profile investors, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
